Frank Beyer

Frank Paul Beyer was a German film director. In East Germany he was one of the most important film directors, working for the state film monopoly DEFA and directed films that dealt mostly with the Nazi era and contemporary East Germany. His film Trace of Stones was banned foryears in 1966 by the ruling SED. His 1975 film Jacob the Liar was the only East German film ever nominated for an Academy Award. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 until his death he mostly directed television films.

Frank Beyer was born as Frank Paul Beyer in Nobitz in Thuringia, Germany, to Paul Beyer, a clerk, and Charlotte Beyer, a sales clerk. He had a brother, Hermann Beyer who should have become a successful actor. After the Machtergreifung of the Nazi Party in 1933 his father, a social democrat lost his job and was unemployed for several years. In 1942 he was drafted for military service and was killed one year later at the Eastern Front.

Source: Wikipedia